Markus Zusak, now 30, has been writing intensively since he was 16 years old.
"It was then I decided to be a writer and that nothing would stop me," Zusak said by phone from a Cleveland hotel during his U.S. book tour. His home is in Sydney, Australia.
"I wasn't published until I was 24," Zusak said, "after I had three failed manuscripts hit the rubbish heap. For three years, I tried to write the same book maybe a thousand times. I'd get halfway through it and quit. I felt like such a huge failure."
His first three published works are usually classified as young-adult books — "Fighting Ruben Wolfe," "Getting the Girl" and "I Am the Messenger."
After that he wanted to do something different. He had many stories in his head that had been told to him by his parents. "I had heard the stories growing up almost in the way a child learns to speak."
And even during his earliest writing he had an idea floating around in his mind about a young person who steals books yet finds a way to give back.
After determining Nazi Germany to be the setting, Zusak called upon the experiences of his German parents to write a major novel, "The Book Thief."
Although the publisher is also promoting this one as a young-adult novel, it clearly crosses all age levels. Naturally, he started writing for his own age group in his teens, but he no longer writes to any specified age group.
Zusak has an arts degree (emphasis on the humanities) from the University of New South Wales. But while he was a student and a writer, he also held down jobs, cleaning a doctor's office, substitute-teaching and tutoring in the afternoons.
He discovered, however, that teaching is not for him. "I don't like telling people what to do."
He did a lot of reading, studying documents and interviewing people besides his parents before writing the book. He also relied on the examples of writers he loves, such as Peter Hedges, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving — and Tim Winton, the author of "Cloud Street," whom Zusak believes is Australia's most beloved writer.
Zusak's objective in writing his own book was not to educate readers but to tell them a good story. He uses a number of writing techniques, such as short chapters and short sentences, artistic renderings and regular forecasts (in bold) of future events.
He said he doesn't know why he favors short sentences. "One word can do a lot. I want every single word to count. I edited each part of the book up to 100 times. I wanted Death — an all-knowing and sympathetic narrator — to forecast events even though he was haunted by what he was doing. He knew what was coming, but the story was still worth telling."
Initially, the author thought using Death as the narrator was a mistake. "It created a macabre edge to the story. I was enjoying it too much. Then suddenly it hit me. I saw death as being haunted by us, humans, because we're all afraid of death. No wants to die. So the narrator sees the wars and all our miseries, but he also sees the beautiful snippets of what we do. By that time, I had his voice."
Zusak writes steadily once he begins a project. "I generally write from beginning to end. I have to finish part one without contemplating part two. I'm pretty disciplined, but then, every day I fail, I get a step closer to finding something that works."
He sees his main character, Liesel, "as stealing things back, like taking books from a burning pile. Metaphorically, she is stealing words and freedom back from Hitler. He is destroying people with words, but she is stealing books and rewriting history. She is reading in bomb shelters to calm people down. She gives decency and love and respect to Max, the Jew who is hiding in her basement."
Liesel reads such books as "The Grave Digger's Handbook," "The Dream Carrier" and "The Shoulder Shrug" — all fictitious titles that appealed to the author. All of them alluded to the problems generated by Hitler's oppressive tactics.
Originally, Zusak intended to write a 100-page novella, but it just grew. "The book is an attempt to be different. It's ambitious in style and content, and whether people like it or not, I don't mind. But I put everything into it, so now I'm worried about the next book. But that's a good place to be."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com